Notable Quotables - 08/12/1996

Published: 8/12/1996 12:00 AM ET

Chaplain-in-Chief?

"Mr. Clinton is
clearly more and more comfortable now in the role these times
have forced on our Presidents - first mourner and
chaplain-in-chief. But his moments with the families must have
struck him as especially poignant today, for when he left them
in the hotel and entered his car, he buried his head on Mrs.
Clinton's shoulder."
- ABC reporter Jim Wooten on the TWA crash aftermath, July 25 World
News Tonight.

Republicans Have Zero
Tolerance?

"We begin tonight
with what you could call zero tolerance....Today by the time Mr.
Dole spoke by satellite to his party delegates, who were 20
already gathered in San Diego, all notions of tolerance on the
subject of abortion had disappeared from the party's
platform."
- Peter Jennings, August 6 World News Tonight.

"The Republican
Party platform committee has forced abortion rights advocates to
walk the plank, the abortion plank. The committee handed Robert
Dole a defeat, by turning down language endorsing tolerance 20
of abortion rights supporters."
- ABC anchor Elizabeth Vargas, August 6 Good Morning America.

Reality Check:"We also recognize
that members of our party have deeply held and sometimes
differing views. We view this diversity of views as a source of
strength."
- Republican platform language.

On Top of the Big
Stories

"Quite honestly, I
haven't looked at whatever tolerance language they allegedly
have in their platform."
- Newsweek reporter Howard Fineman when asked by a caller about
the Democrats' platform abortion language on CNBC's Politics,
August 6.

Wrestling Reaganomics
to the Ground 20

"The old joke
among economists is that an economist who's stuck in a ditch
gets out of it by assuming the existence of a ladder, and there
are a fair amount of assumptions of existences of ladders in
this plan that are really, I think, under intense scrutiny, are
not going to bear out."- U.S. News & World Report Senior Writer Susan Dentzer
immediately after Dole's tax cut address on CNN, August
5.

"Americans might
remember that the last time we tried to grow our way out of the
deficit that the tax cut happened, the growth didn't happen, and
the deficit was huge at the end of it. How are they going to
explain this new version of supply-side?"
- PBS Washington Week in Review host Ken Bode, July 26.

"Now [Dole]'s
embracing supply-side economics, years after it came (and went)
in GOP circles. So late in his career - so late in the campaign
- it looks desperate. Clinton, meanwhile, can brag that the
annual deficit has been cut in half on his watch - and that
he's a champion of fiscal responsibility. In other words, he can
be Bob Dole."
- Newsweek reporter Howard Fineman, August 12.

Tom Brokaw: Hillary
Still the Victim of Sexism

"Some of it,
obviously, has to do with legal questions, as well, obviously.
She's had to testify before a grand jury, but all that aside,
and those are serious issues, do you think that this country is
not as far along as we'd like to believe when it comes to
dealing with gender equality?"
- Tom Brokaw to Rosalynn Carter at the Olympics in Atlanta on
MSNBC's InterNight, July 25.

Linda Douglass Shakes
Her Pom-Poms

"The President
again has had sort of an amazing week. The Democratic Party,
which used to function like a herd of cats, has now very tamely
crafted a very centrist Democratic platform that emphasizes
crime 20 fighting. It talks about stemming the tide of violence
on TV that is influencing our children, talks about school
uniforms, talks about the death penalty, talks about tolerance
for people who oppose abortion, for example. So, the President
who was being abandoned by 20 his party just two years ago now
has managed to oversee a party that has crafted this platform
very much in his centrist image. Even though the background
noise of what is loosely being called Whitewater continues, 20
none of it seems to stick to the President."
- CBS reporter Linda Douglass, July 14 Sunday Morning.

We Lied: We Really
Hate New Democrats

Sam Donaldson:
"Congress had suddenly realized there's an election coming
up, so all right, they're going to pass a bunch of
legislation-" Cokie Roberts: "Concentrates the
mind." Donaldson: "Like hanging, and in Congress's
case, in my view of what they did, perhaps hanging would have
been better. Because the welfare bill, we're going to regret as
a country. It's not just anyone in poverty, it's the children.
Throwing women and the children off the rolls. Everyone's for
workfare, everyone's for changing the welfare system. Bill
Clinton promised it. He said, however, it would take $10 billion
more to ease people down the ramp off this train. Instead, we
just throw 'em off now and said [sic] `Good luck'!"
- Exchange on This Week with David Brinkley, August 4.

"[Clinton] knows
that he is consigning helpless people to terrible hardship, and
some to premature burials. He called the press conference to
announce that he will sign the bill anyway.... Mr. Shumyatsky is
in the U.S. legally, but is not a citizen. Thus his SSI checks
will cease when the welfare bill becomes law. He will have no
money at all. Perhaps he will set up light housekeeping in a
park. Maybe he'll curl up on a grate. Maybe he'll do the
politicians a favor and just die."
- Former NBC News reporter Bob Herbert in his New York Times
column, August 2.

"Secretary, you
find yourself now in the position of being praised by Newt
Gingrich, at the same time that Senator Pat Moynihan calls this
the most brutal piece of social policy since the Reconstruction.
Doesn't that make you the slightest bit nervous? "...You
know far better than I do that you are rewriting the social
policy of this country that has stood for the last 61 years,
albeit with a lot of problems. Do you worry at all about the
consequences? Do you worry at all that with a change this
enormous, people are going to get hurt?"
- Two of substitute host Chris Wallace's six liberal questions
to HHS Secretary Donna Shalala, July 31 Nightline.

"The new landmark
welfare overhaul President Clinton promised to sign won't be law
for a while yet, but there is already a great deal of fear and
anxiety all over the country about the impact it will
have."
- CBS Evening News substitute anchor Paula Zahn, August
1.

Speaking of Formulaic
Hagiography of S&L Cheats...

"And don't labor
to make heroes of the nonheroic. Air-brushing swimmer Gary Hall
Jr., the spoiled grandson of savings and loan cheat Charles
Keating Jr., by not mentioning that he was a major goof-off,
blowing up mailboxes and tearing up golf courses, is formulaic
hagiography."
- Time columnist Margaret Carlson complaining NBC's
Olympic coverage was featuring too many personal stories, August
5.

"Friends of
Hillary Clinton would have you believe she's an amalgam of Betty
Crocker, Mother Teresa, and Oliver Wendell Holmes...The former
Hillary Rodham grew up in Park Ridge, a Chicago suburb, where
her father owned a textile company. She earned every Girl Scout
badge, pulled a wagonful of sports equipment to her job at the
park every summer, was elected president of her high school
class and earned so many honors that her parents recall `being
slightly uncomfortable at her graduation.' She organized
circuses and amateur sports tournaments to raise money for
migrant workers."
- Carlson, then Deputy Washington Bureau Chief, in the January
27, 1992 Time.

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